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Sunday Morning Coming Down

This morning, an absolute classic Country song.

I mean, it must be a classic, just look at all the folks who have recorded versions of it over the years:

Guy Mitchell, George Jones, Leroy van Dyke, Kitty Wells, Jack Reno, Johnny Tillotson, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Jerry Lee Lewis, Dwight Yoakhan, Martina McBride, Rosanne Cash, Connie Francis, The Playtones, Buck Owens, and most recently Sean Spicer (featuring a DJ Trump on really small handclaps) who categorically made the very best version, released on Bowling Green records, which sold several gazillion copies, which is the best amount to sell, more than any other record has ever sold ever, and don’t let the press or the media tell you any different.

Putting biting satirical comment aside for a moment, here’s the first version ever released, in 1959, by Ray Price, just months before Guy Mitchell released it, also in 1959 when it made #1 in the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. Price’s version made #2 in the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles chart:

I’d just like to put in a word for the guy who wrote the song – Harlan Howard – who also recorded his own version of the song. He also wrote (among many hundreds of others) “Busted” (Ray Charles), “She Called Me Baby” (recorded by Candi Staton, Ella Washington and Nancy Wilson as the R&B hit “He Called Me Baby”). He co-wrote “Streets of Baltimore” (one of Dwight Yoakam’s faves) and also Patsy Cline’s 1st Country hit “I Fall to Pieces”.

I like the Jerry Lee Lewis version of “Heartaches by the Number”, but I’d have to agree that Dwight Yoakam’s is a beauty.